Yi-Fu Tuan (1930--2022)
31 Aug 2022 10:49
Professor for many years of human geography at the University of Wisconsin, which is where I did my Ph.D. and how I discovered his works (thanks, University Book Store!) but I never studied with him, to my loss. While, as I said, he was a geographer by training and profession, I think he is best understood as a kind of moral philosopher, where the attention to historical and anthropological examples overwhelms systematicity. Read in close succession (as I did in the 1990s), one notices that lots of his examples recur from book to book, but kaleidescopically, turned around and juxtaposed to reveal new aspects of themselves and new connections to other examples. I might add that there is a fundamental decency to his persona in writing which I find very appealing, and wish I could emulate (but know is beyond me).
- Recommended:
- The Good Life
- Passing Strange and Wonderful
- Cosmos and Hearth
- Escapism
- Morality and Imaginationn: Paradoxes of Progress
- Segmented Worlds and Self
- Landscapes of Fear
- Dominance and Affection: THe Making of Pets
- To read:
- China
- Coming Home to China
- Dear Colleagues
- Humanist Geography: An Individual's Search for Meaning
- Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience
- Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perceptions, Attitudes and Values
- Who Am I? An Autobiography of Emotion, Mind and Spirit
